The role of shelterbelts within an agricultural landscape is changing significantly. In the past, shelterbelts have been encouraged and established to reduce soil erosion and increase crop yields. Land reform (land privatisation) and advances in production technology led to increases in agricultural holding size. This requires a revision of policy concerning shelterbelt management in rural communities, especially since there is no recent research on community perceptions regarding the adoption and retention of shelterbelts. The specific objective of this research was to identify the public costs, benefits and obstacles from the adoption and retention of shelterbelts. In the summer of 2019, a survey was conducted of territorial communities (hromadas) in Ukraine. It was observed that many of the benefits of shelterbelts were classified as noneconomic. Therefore, these benefits are more difficult for the leaders of hromadas to recognise within their management decisions. The costs to hromadas were identified and strongly affected management decisions but the actual monetary costs were not identified. Shelterbelts have the potential to mitigate climate change yet most hromadas do not recognise the social and environmental benefits of shelterbelts within their management decisions.

Cadastral information is a key component for many land use functions and a core to the effective land markets, land use and sustainable development. These applications require up-to-date, reliable and complete data. This paper focuses on one aspect of land cadastre – identification of the objects of the cadastre. The characteristics and development of the existing cadastral system are discussed. We follow an empirical approach and propose an overview how and in what form the objects of state land cadastre are identified and registered in Ukraine. The paper analyses the problems associated with the plurality of the land cadastre objects. It is proposed to remove the registration numbers of the state land cadastre objects and new cadastral numbers of the land parcel from the legislation and return the legalization of the old cadastral number of the land parcel. The paper also underlines the necessity to consider the land parcel as a single object of the state land cadastre. Finally, it is proposed that the cadastral number of restrictions in the use of the land parcel will be an immense advantage in land registration and in visualisation the restrictions on the public cadastral map of Ukraine.

The lack of a national strategy (program) for land consolidation, which would be integrated into the country’s land policy, led to the adoption in 2018 of the Law of Ukraine № 2498-VIII “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine in Respect of the Issue of Collective Ownership of Land, Improvement of Agricultural Land Use Rules, Prevention of Raidership and Stimulation of Irrigation in Ukraine”. This law is designed to solve the existing problems of land use concerning the rational use of land parcels. However, the principles declared by the relevant law have not gained practical application to this day. The purpose of the article is to analyse the procedure for the formation of the agricultural land layout to ensure the rational use of land through the exchange of rights of use as an alternative to land consolidation. A detailed analysis of the Law № 2498-VIII allowed to develop an algorithm for the formation of the agricultural land layout with the purpose to exchange of land parcels and their rights of use. This has allowed approaching the solution of the set problem in a more structured and comprehensive way. It has been established that the permitted exchange of land parcels and rights of use within the agricultural land layout is not a land consolidation either in the classical or in any other sense. An analysis of the legal provisions of Law № 2498-VIII has revealed their inconsistency with the “Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security” and best international practice on land consolidation. The existing obstacles to the implementation of the legislation on improving the rules of land use in the agricultural land layout have been found out. Three key causes of their occurrence (technical, legal and organizational) have been identified.

Motives: Land is the most vital resource that meets basic human needs. There are several mechanisms for achieving the goals of sustainable administration and management of land resources, and the cadastral system is the key mechanism. In most developing countries, the procedures for monitoring the performance of cadastral systems are inadequate or non-existent. Ukraine is not an exception in this respect, and this issue is largely disregarded in the domestic literature.Aim: The objective of the study was to establish an evaluation framework that relies on globally recognized best practices and their corresponding indicators. The main aim of the framework is to measure and assess the effectiveness of Ukraine’s cadastral system.Results: The evaluation methodology consisted of four stages: an analysis of evaluation indicators, identification of international best practices, identification of performance gaps in the cadastral system, and the development of a summary profile based on a SWOT analysis. The cadastral system was evaluated based on indicators within five domains: political, management, operational levels, external factors, and the review process.